Narrative

Alex crested the cliff first, breath steaming in the freezing wind. Below, the rest of the team clawed up the slate face, snow whipping in their goggles. He checked the Mothball scanner HQ had given him: the ηβ waves pulsed hard toward Pigpen Outpost, silhouetted against the storm.

An explosion tore through the howl of the wind. A whole section of the outpost’s third floor blew apart, plasma scoring the air in searing trails. Debris hissed past Alex into the abyss.

“Team, the dance just started and we’re not missing it. I’m going in. Aswan, take the ridge and cover me.”

Another blast lit the storm. Alex traced the angle: enemy fire was coming from somewhere in the white curtain ahead. No time for a duel. He cut north along the building’s side, boots crunching, Combi rifle tight to his shoulder.

The ground shook. Heavy footfalls thudded through the snow. A shadow loomed, it was a Morat Witch-Soldier, impervious to the cold, machete raised.

Aswan’s shot cracked through the veil, dropping the alien before the blade could fall. Alex breathed once in thanks, then pushed inside.

On the third floor, where the first plasma round hit, a woman was clutching a sack. The scanner spiked: the Mothball was inside.

“Drop the bag and lay down your weapon!” Alex ordered.

She shook her head, eyes wide. “I’m just an hiker. Training for the Frozen Road. The storm drove me in here a—”

“Nice try,” Alex cut her off. “Not my first rodeo. I can smell an impersonator.”

Before she could answer, another Witch-Soldier smashed through. The woman bolted. Aswan’s rifle roared again providing cover, and Alex took the chance to chase her down the stairs. He caught her in the main hall, pulling the bag from her hands.

"I-I need it. That thing appeared to me, it choose me, it-it saved me!"

“O-12 is confiscating this artifact for the sake of the Human Sphere. Do not panic: my team’s outside,” he told her. “We’ll get you out.”

They pushed into the blizzard. A Peeler raked fire ahead, giving them a path, until an alien shot blew it apart in a burst of metal and snow.

“Keep running!” Alex yelled. She sprinted toward a Bronze unit, but another plasma bolt hit close. The shockwave flung Alex over the edge of the path.

He landed hard, dazed. Snow swirled. A tall, black figure emerged from the haze. An Umbra Samaritan, its sword already poised for the kill.

Routine, Alex told himself. Trained for this. A thousand drills: sidestep, draw, fire. Sidestep, draw, fire. Easy to say, until an alien vampire is swinging for your neck. Muscles coiled. Hand to holster. Pistol out and...

Too late. The blade fell.

"Pity," Alex thought, as he embraced darkness. "Just a little sooner and—"

Light, again.

Sidestep. Draw. Fire.

The DA round punched through the Samaritan’s head. The alien collapsed, its weapon burying itself in the ice. A one in a million shot. The bag in Alex’s grip sagged, empty now.

"Not bad," he thought "Sometimes, a second chance is all you need."

The ship no longer lunged forward with its earlier hunger, yet Te773 kept swelling in the viewport, its mottled face turning slowly toward them. A solitary asteroid, anonymous in shape to the human eye, yet laden with meaning. Erin’s thoughts wandered to her assignment on Leortolani Station, where she had chased a tangle of false leads and betrayals only to watch state-of-the-art REMtech slip into the hands of AibotCorp. No matter the scale of the threat, no matter how far from the cradle of Earth, humanity always seemed willing to draw blood over a tastier scrap of meat.

CameRaccoon's streaming filled her earpiece as the bot crept back through cleared ventilation shafts, a litany of the Sphere’s ongoing contradictions. JSA celebrating Karakuris toppling a Wrecker. Aleph and Tohaa slipping troops into each other’s lines to foul their plans. Yu Jing and Nomads fighting in Te773’s depths despite the Derozer’s collision course. Skirmishes between O-12 and the Combined Army, officially at peace. And the Libertos, perhaps the most exploited people in known space, pledging their services to anyone who dangled a promise of freedom. They called themselves Freedom Fighters, but behaved as every other mercenary did, selling their loyalty and shedding their ideals for the right price.

The whole Code Infinity notion was not an exception, it was the constant. The rare surprise was when people managed to work together for something greater. Perhaps that was what Pandora had offered Achilles, and why others, the so-called harbingers, had followed. To be taken in, bringing not their independence but their loftiest convictions, a willingness to stand united before the grinding tides of destiny. It was almost beautiful, Erin thought. But she had too much left to lose, a sister she had found and lost again, the need to testify to the truth no matter how ugly, and the deep fear that the Evolved Intelligence would, in the end, discard its followers to serve only itself.

The deck surged under her feet, the engines howling back to life. The lieutenant’s voice came sharp over comms.

"All clear. Tango, engines are stable, get to the pods. If I am not there, launch without me."

A crackle of acknowledgment followed. "Understood, sir. We will see you at the Nest."

"You might," he replied, and there was something final in his tone. "Team Oscar, you too. Go now. Godspeed."

One by one the escape pods sealed and dimmed. The lieutenant stepped into the center of the room, shotgun in hand.

"Come out," he said into the stillness. "You will not change this ship’s course hiding in shadows."

Erin suddenly understood. He had always known about the figure she had glimpsed earlier. He was staying behind, holding the control room with Oolong to give his people a chance to live, even if it meant dying here. No cube could survive the Derozer’s impact. The best he could hope for his comrades was a new body somewhere else, their debts to Cube Jägers doubled, but still, somehow, alive.

The shadow moved. Oolong’s spitfire roared, tracking the cloaked shape unerringly, until its lights spasmed and froze, locked in a sheath of enemy code. The shimmer broke to reveal a Sulsa Warrior, sword already in motion.

The lieutenant fired once, twice, backing toward the consoles, but the Sulsa was fast, weaving through the shots. Steel flashed, and the blade slid clean across his neck. He staggered, eyes fixed on Erin for a heartbeat, and then crumpled without a word.

Cinq vaulted the console, neglecting the existence of the Yu Jing infiltrator, her hands flying over controls. The Derozer’s path shifted, the looming bulk of LGSRC sliding past the canopy like a swallow through open sky. They had missed it by seconds.

"Lucky us," Erin thought with bitter irony, "now we can keep killing each other over that stupid rock."

LGSRC. Fifty hours before.

Tara popped the hatch and reached for the case. The first leg of her job was done; the Pneumarch would be pleased. Officially, she wasn’t meant to know what it contained, but after the Cailleach mishap she never delivered anything without looking first.

Rumor said it was an AI, maybe the most potent humanity had ever conceived, or at least a fragment of one. A divided relic, hidden away until the Sphere could wield it. Cyberpunk superstition tangled with post–wormhole myth. Or maybe not.

She opened the case.

A dataprism rested on foam, unassuming. How could something so small trouble even the Evolved Intelligence? She hesitated, then jacked in. 

Light. It swallowed her, lifting her into impossible altitude, where the whole architecture of a reality, intricate and infinite, balanced on the point of a pin. The mind of a universe, threaded in zero and one.

The rush hit too hard. Her safeguards kicked in, dumping her from the link. She collapsed, sweating, lungs burning, grateful for the failsafe. What Tara didn’t know was that the seed for something far larger had already reached her cube.

---

Somewhere. Now.

“She’s waking up! She’s waking up!”

Bartender’s voice: only thinner now, less certain. They were out of her memory and back in the present.

Tara opened her eyes. Straps pinned her to a medbench in a cavernous warehouse. Strange machinery, jury–rigged and twitching with erratic current, sprawled in every direction.

The bartender stood before her, tethered to the same setup, identical to her memory except for the holster under his arm. Behind him, bent over a console alive with invisible interfaces, was the woman they called Butcher. And beyond the glass wall, higher up, a silhouette: Baker.

“What... happened?” Tara rasped.

“Tension drop. You blacked out for a couple minutes. Luckily, we’ve got what we need to bring you back fast. Butcher, let’s push forward: we’ve lost enough time.”

Butcher didn’t move. Her head lay on the console, neural rig still plugged in her now deep-fried brain, one last thought burning in the wreckage of her mind: how could she have hacked me without a device?

Barman realized too late. Tara surged forward, smashing her forehead into his face, wrenching the pistol from his holster, and emptying it into his chest.

Before his body hit the floor, she tore free from the medbench, ripping cables and IV lines loose, vaulting the console, leaping cabinet to cabinet. She smashed through the glass wall in a storm of shards and straight onto Baker.

Baker’s breath went ragged. “What the hell...?”

Tara’s eyes burned. Her voice was no longer hers.

“Don’t you see, fool? I am Cleopatra.”

HQ’s command map was chaos: pins, alerts, whole sectors throbbing in red. The kind of information overload only someone comfortably seated at a desk on Comcilium could wrap his head around, but - for once - Alex leaned forward, eyes fixed, wondering which front would claim him next.

PanO had committed heavily on Dawn, hammering a remote scientific outpost to extract two civilians tied to LGSRC. Knights of Santiago led the charge: Alex pictured them easily. Blue plate armor, swords as long as a man’s leg, capes snapping in the frozen wind of Dawn’s western permafall. No cube resurrection could dull the chill of facing religious zeal that carried steel.

On Concilium, Tohaa influence was seeping into Bhai City’s talks, their leverage on the Mothball incident threatening Nomad ambitions in the outer edge. The balance of power creaked but adapted, as it always did.

Meanwhile, Haqqislamite forces with mercenary support clashed with the Combined Army on the moon’s dark side over an undisclosed objective. Haqq secured its ground and pressed forward on the Mothball trail, with operations surfacing as far as Varuna and Svalarheima, where they had breached an AuraDora facility.

"Alex, your next target will be in Svalarheima." The news pleased him, but it was hollow work: once again, picking through the aftermath of someone else’s battle.

"Interesting, but I thought Chris was going to take care of it. What happened?"

Raveneye Officer Chris Hernandez unmuted his comlog but didn't activate his camera.

"Hello everyone. This is Ensign Jen on behalf of RO Hernandez. We had a hard and close encounter with an EI Aspect. That's why we can't take the Svalarheima assignment. I'll brief you about how it went next."

“I see, thank you for updating me Jen. So, what's our connection to AuraDora?”

“None that matter." Explained the egghead strategist from HQ "Your target arrived with the Toucan Dandy, the last ship to leave LGSRC before the incident. It went down near Trementine Peak after a routine patrol check turned violent. Antagonist forces are fighting for part of its cargo, which we believe is the Mothball itself. Whoever holds it is trapped by a snowstorm too severe for landing. That's why you’ll approach overland. Secure the package.”

“Bullets and fresh powder,” Alex grinned. “Born for it.”

Ten hours later, he was cutting down Trementine’s western bank, swallowed by a storm of snow and stinging hail. The wind roared like broken machinery. His field Epsilon, callsign Aswan, caught up with him, both men hunched against the gale. Ahead, the Pigpen outpost clung to a cliff face, a decrepit rest stop for Frozen Road racers.

HQ believed the Mothball from LGSRC was inside. Alex didn’t care. This was his element, and it lit him up like nothing else.

“Status?”

The Dahshat engineer checked his comlog without lifting his eyes.

“Engines are hot. We’re a handful of clicks from the point of no return. Our chasers are still lagging.”

The young lieutenant gave a tight nod. Tension curled at the edge of his lips, but he seemed satisfied.

“Good. Team Alpha departs at T-minus eight. The rest of us follow at minus three. Oolong covers exfil as planned.”

The Rui Shi shifted its weight, its front legs hissing into position. It chirped once: short, sharp, expectant.

Then the stars outside the forward canopy brightened. For a moment, Erin thought the ship had reached a shift point but it was only the lights inside going dark. Panels faded out, replaced by the low pulse of emergency signs, humming red in the cold.

Unlike the flickering chaos during the biotechivore breach, the darkness now was calm. Composed. Erin allowed herself a quiet smile: CameRaccoon just made it.

“What’s that?” the lieutenant snapped. “Status. Now.”

The engineer’s fingers danced again. “Main engine shut down. We’re still on course, but countdown’s no longer accelerating.”

“Could be Nomad E/M torpedoes,” Cinq muttered, admiringly. “our strike craft are unmatched.”

“Negative,” barked the Dahshat hacker. "Nomads streams are only talking about Haqq decoys in high Concilium orbit. No chatter from PanO either, they all just seem to care for some unscheduled DIU audit on Neoterra.”

The old woman, calm as ritual, spoke without turning. “Log out, Kimchi. You’ll only get yourself cooked if there’s infiltration. I need you alive to firewall Bel Andi if we’re exposed. Understood?”

Erin stared. Even mid-crisis, the veteran NCO was handing out orders and mentorship like battlefield rations. Someone once told her mercenary units were just family businesses with better weapons. It made more sense now.

“This isn’t external,” the engineer added. “We’re outside their range. It’s sabotage.”

The lieutenant turned slowly, taking center position. His gestures were sharp, but they had rhythm: a conductor with a very deadly orchestra.

“New plan. Team Tango secures the engine deck, while team Oscar secures the escape pods. I don’t want to lose our last ride home.”

Quickly, efficently, the two teams moved for their new objectives.

“What about Team Papa and Oolong?” the NCO asked, pausing at the threshold.

“We stay in the Control Room,” the lieutenant replied. “Don’t worry.”

The doors slid closed behind them.

Seconds passed. Then, out of the corner of Erin’s eye, movement. A flicker of shadow that hadn’t been there a moment before.

Someone else was in the room.

Chusè Feng, Shentang’s southern hemisphere.

The Toucan Dandy descended smoothly from the clean silence of orbit into the gauzy humidity of the geothermal hub. Below, steam curled around basalt towers and antennae blinked dim through the haze. Amin shifted upright, his breath shallow.

“They’ll come for me to patch me up. Thank you.”

“We’re even: you saved me.”

“It’s good to balance things. I hope we'll meet again.”

“I doubt it. The universe isn’t known for second chances.”

“Who knows,” he replied, as the hatch hissed open and the Trauma Team rushed in.

Tara and the bartender followed her past self down into the terminal: a layered hive of drugstores, express lounges, and hollow-eyed travelers waiting for regional links or the rare interplanetary jump. She paused at the departures board. Most flights listed one destination: Yían Xiáng, the capital.

“What were you looking for?” the bartender asked. “You stood there five minutes.”

Tara hesitated. “I was deciding if I was really going to do this.”

Her former self approached a public terminal and keyed into a disposable encrypted chat. The field was empty.

I know I said I wouldn’t, but I need what I gave you five years ago. Let’s meet again soon.

The bartender leaned closer. “That message - does it have to do with Cleopatra?”

She stared him down. “It’s personal. That channel is just between me and my sister. She’s the only other one with access.”

He stepped in front of her. “Nothing’s personal in here, Tara. Not while you’re in our space. And we’ve got enough power to keep you in it for a long time. So don’t test us.”

Tara nodded slowly, but not in agreement: she was filing away his words. Power. They need power to run this thing. A rare slip.

“No need to get dramatic,” she said. “I gave her access to the channel and a holovid five years ago. She didn’t know I existed until then. It was proof of my existence. It’s... complicated.”

He looked at her. Blank, uneasy. A kind of discomfort she’d only seen a few times before. He wasn’t puzzled by the facts, but by what they meant. Family, doubled identities, loneliness mapped across a shared genome. It was too much. Alien, maybe.

She noted the look. Silently.

“So, what now?” he asked. “We look at you passed out at a maid café for five hours before you get back on your ship?”

“I don’t sleep in cafés,” she muttered. “Especially maid cafés. I had a terrible experience on Bakunin.”

As they entered, the projection dipped — like an ambient tremor, a soft dimming of the lights.

“What was that?” she asked.

The bartender’s tone shifted. “Butcher, did you catch that?”

“Yeah,” came a gruff voice from above. “Voltage drop across the shell. I’m checking. Hold on, resetting n—”

A new voice cut through. Clean. Distorted.

“Butcher. Bartender. This is Baker. Proceed. We need answers.”

Tara stiffened. A third one. She never imagined a third.

She broke the silence.

“I know what you’re showing me, but this isn’t me. I don’t remember it like this..." She paused to take a breath. Suddenly, air around her felt heavy and artificial, drenched in suffocating chemicals. Her heartbeat spiked. "...since the Grief Operator at LGSRC... something’s been off. These memories: they don’t feel entirely mine. They must’ve done something here, on Shentang. They—”

Her knees gave out. She collapsed beside her sleeping double, on the checkered floor of a maid café, in the soft flicker of a memory that was no longer hers.

Alex’s flyers left the platform and sliced through the crimson air toward Al-Farömeo Oasis. ETA: fifteen minutes.

He glanced at his team with pride. His trusted Silverstar Prime, a tested chain of command, and a crew of hotheads trained for close-quarters battle. The mission was once again clear: storm the facility, extract intel on Monte-Sori, connect it to the Mothball incident. He felt sharp, ready.

Then his comlog lit up, pale and silent.

Code grey, HQ. Mission aborted for strategic recalibration.

Two hours later, Khadijah, Bourak. O-12 Permanent Mission to Haqqislam.

"Of all the people in the universe, how dare you pull the plug on my mission?"

Alex’s voice echoed off the walls, every word hammered into the desk with his finger.

He drew a breath, trying to steady himself.

"This was my shot to get back in the saddle, my way. You know I’m a simple man, Leah. Just don’t set me on a path and yank the ground from under me. I’m not chasing a career like you."

"I know, Alex. You’re a downhill type. I get it."

He winced at the pun and dropped into the chair.

Leah Recalcas. Calm, precise, always three steps ahead. She knew how to keep things cool.

"But don’t think we’re that different. Being here isn’t glamorous. After New Hypatia, I’ve been crawling my way back too."

Alex shrugged. "Fine. Just give me a reason. Why shut it down?"

Leah stood. Younger, maybe, but steady. She leaned against the window, adjusting the blinders. Outside, Bourak’s capital buzzed beneath the evening breeze.

"Two days ago, an OSS unit hit the Oasis. Their target was Amin Monte-Sori. A name you should know. He was a rogue Hassassin turned bounty hunter, driven by utilitarian ideals. Turns out he's in a bio-gen valley—ideal for cloning. Fast, stable, cheap. Possibly tipped off by Shasvastii contacts, but no proof about that."

She glanced over.

"He built a network. Trusted clones, 'extras', ideal long-term assets for up to thirty months before showing signs of decay. The perfect long term infiltration tool. Small scale, high impact."

"Interesting," Alex said. "Still doesn’t explain why my boots aren't on the ground."

"There’s more. Yu Jing’s overperforming where this crisis started. They’re locking down asteroid Te773 and secured operational lead on the Derozer situation. But JSA penetrated one of their data centers on Yutang and leaked files tying them directly to Monte-Sori. The real Amin’s been dead for over two years. A premium clone is still running the business, allegedly backed by the Jade Empire."

Alex yawned, loud and theatrical. "Are we there yet?" he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

Leah didn’t flinch.

"There's this Nomad debrief, featuring some private Akebe, circulating after a skirmish with Yu Jing at a docking hub. Their side uncovered corroborating evidence so it's not just attrition between two old rivals. But YJ is stonewalling until the crisis is over. And since they’re performing well so close to the epicenter..."

"You’re turning a blind eye. And asking us to close the other one here."

"I couldn’t have said it better myself, Deputy Marshal."

Alex stood slowly.

"You’re too kind, sir. But we both know that’s not true."

Leah gave a small nod.

"Stay sharp, Alex. There’ll be plenty of facts for you to check with your bullets. Just not this one."

The Dahshat hacker plugged into the ship's control panel and got to work. The control room's speakers erupted with wide-spectrum comms: first a cacophony, a murder of voices layered over each other, then gradually filtering into isolated transmissions as the hacker fine-tuned the system, searching for a specific frequency.

"...new Lhost required for Hisen #00023, flanked by an enemy TAG during the defense of Yué Minerals headquarters in Shentang. Maximum priority. Activation code RM619-ZZ..."

Erin glanced at Captain Cinq. She remembered her from earlier campaigns. Back then, just like today, her voice meant certainty. Now, everything else seemed to erode, aging faster and faster: especially ships. The Derozer, once a second-tier vessel during the Durgama takeover, bore visible signs of age. Humanity had once feared that the arrival of the Combined Army would stall progress. Instead, it had spun human evolution into overdrive. Ships aged faster. People outlasted themselves, constantly renewing in pursuit of legend. Maybe, a meaningless one.

"...our REM units have secured the sector from Shasvastii infiltrators. Meanwhile, Morat Aggression Forces continue to hinder Aleph operations in Paradiso. Promptly resurrected, Agamemnon stated that such minor tensions with our Combined Army guests should not compromise the Panissa Treaty on outer-sphere alloy trade. Pneumarch Shignurya, the Evolved Intelligence's emissary for this quarter, has yet to release a statement, reportedly delayed by negotiations with JSA envoys from Shinju."

The silhouette of the LGSRC grew larger by the minute. Erin suspected the plan was to crash the Derozer into the asteroid and evacuate just moments before the point of no return. The logic was brutal, effective. But reasons remained uncertain. Who could pursue such an outcome? Who was behind the Dahshat team?

She found herself circling the question of permanence. Something about Agamemnon struck a chord. First came the recreations: figures from myth, reborn into the present. Then the new demigods of the Hexadome: a fragile blend of idols, gladiators, and athletes. Now, commanders like Cinq: refined minds, attuned to the shifting edge of the frontier. And now, commoners were returning as well thanks to their bank accounts. Will they be revived just for the sake of their own existence in the future?

Was this transcendence? To freeze the species’ best in time and let them build their own story? Like a spin-off of a species?

She thought of her childhood. She had been lucky, she had a sister. It had been five years since she last saw Tara on the Nephews, but twins were twins for life. To some extent, they let each other live life twice. That, too, was a kind of permanence.

Her earring buzzed, vibrating faintly. Snapping out of her thoughts, she tapped it twice, careful not to alert the Dahshat operatives, still busy fortifying the perimeter.

“CameRaccoon, you damn bot,” she whispered, a rare smile sneaking onto her face. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve got a situation here, and I need your help.”

On board the Toucan Dandy, somewhere en route from LGSRC to Shentang, forty-two hours before.

Tara sat at the control panel, reviewing the ship's trajectory.  At the back of the cabin, a young man with a short beard slept in pain, his head resting awkwardly on his backpack, chest rising and falling out of sync. Tara and the bartender stood silently, watching.

“Is this as far back as you can go?” she asked.

“Yes. No further than this.” he nodded toward the sleeping man. “How did he end up here with you? You barely acknowledged him when Trauma Team evacuated him after landing on Shentang. Yet he thanked you. You called him Amin. Is he Amin Monte-Sori?”

Tara studied the man, her eyes lingering on the uneven rhythm of his breath.

“I don’t know. He never said. The name does sound familiar, though. I worked with a Monte-Sori on a job in Varuna three years ago. We boarded a superyacht named Koral to install a repeater. Food industry espionage, or something like that. I barely saw the guy.”

The bartender nodded slowly, thinking.

“Interesting. Let’s go back to this one here. How did you two meet?”

Tara picked up the bowl of instant ramen from in front of her seated self. Her double didn’t react. The weight, the scent—everything felt real.

“He saved my life while we were escaping the LGSRC. I was running to the hangar, trying to grab a ship and get out. A security guard stopped me. Alarms were blaring. I flashed a fake ID, but he wasn’t interested. He focused on the case I was carrying, insisted on inspecting it. I panicked and kicked him, dropped a bangbomb, ran. He was a Grief Operator and started chasing me. That’s when I saw Amin, already wounded, calling from the hatch of the Toucan Dandy, engines hot. I sprinted. The Grief Operator was right behind me.”

She paused, touching her back, a flicker of doubt crossing her face.

“Then it…”

“Then?” the bartender prompted.

“I remember it hit me, except...it didn’t. I was sure it had. But it hadn’t. Amin must have shot him first. I’m not sure. It’s blurry. Doesn’t matter.”

“He was already injured?”

“Yeah. Looked like Taigha claws. I patched him up. And don’t ask what’s in the backpack: I didn’t check and didn't ask.”

“Of course you didn’t,” the bartender muttered, watching her closely “and about that Varuna job... the Koral burned offshore near Akuna Bay. Ten years ago.”

“Oh, did it?” she replied dryly. “Must’ve been the Koral II, then. I would have checked my files if you had given me net access.”

She said it bitterly, while quietly timing how long it had taken him to fact-check her story. The list of possible locations where she might be held captive had just shrunk.

"Then, we went to Shentang." she said, talking aloud as she thought about the last forty-two hours "Shentang," she repeated, lighting up "it pairs oddly with the two undercover agents I've bumped into entering the bar. Let's go take a look."

Alex muted his microphone and leaned back. The worst part of the coordination meeting was over. Now came the debrief: a ritual where HQ would spin facts into theories and theories into forecasts. Words for a world of words.

They had no clue about the Monte-Sori clone factory he had found: Amin, Farid, whoever that was. All they could do was making up scenarios so that field teams could have a reason to go where it was needed.

"I check facts using bullets," he used to say when someone asked what he did for O-12. Not that anyone asked much anymore.

His thoughts drifted. Suddenly, he was back at the starting gate of the Aegir super slalom, twenty-five years ago. He could still taste the anticipation, feel the pressure behind his teeth. He had memorized that course like scripture, even in his sleep, nerve by nerve, turn by turn, drilled into him through relentless R.E.M. stim sessions. Voices from HQ blurred into a steady rhythm. Alex didn't hear them so much as absorb them, like radio static under water.

"...Shujae hit the site on first entry. Allegedly found a Mothball behind an old comms relay. Nomad response was slow, unfocused. He made it out; alone. That kind of precision doesn’t happen by chance. We’re keeping eyes on Haqqislamite operations in that sector..."

Back then he was already an Olympic medalist, a dream realized. But perfection turned out to have hidden layers, and ambition always whispered there was more. He wasn’t chasing medals anymore. He wanted to be remembered.

"...Ariadnan irregular picked up an abandoned sniper platform and took the shot like she’d done it a hundred times. We underestimated the density of field improvisation. Their front held longer than we projected; we must adjust field assumptions accordingly..."

He expected pressure. He expected risk. He didn’t expect to fall, not like that. The crash was clean, brutal. They patched him up fast, but even the best medtech couldn’t return what he’d lost: his peak had passed.

"...two Makhai pushed into anomaly zones at once. They located both threats and neutralized them clean. Direct, deliberate action. No backups, no fatalities. There are still operators out there who treat precision like a craft, or maybe they know more about MAZ than they are willing to share..."

Aegir became the line that split his life. Before, there was only the pursuit. After, he found himself building something else, something his role in O-12 could offer. He built a sense of duty, piece by piece. But some days, the echo of the ski daredevil he was came calling.

"...opening engagement was a mess. Every channel lit up red, yet no one broke. We held our ground. Waverider Scorpio pushed through, even under signal suppression. Didn’t shift the outcome, maybe, but it kept the line from folding. We acknowledge that..."

"If I only had a second chance" he muttered, speeding down that slope again, in his mind, for the millionth time.

"...Morat strike team flooded the consoles at Yutang Terminal. By the time JSA adjusted, three targets were down and the Zerat had vanished. But they held. Just barely. And that's why we’re sending you, Alex. Bourak won’t be easier, and that’s why you’ll lead the Pharaoh team once again. Is that clear, Deputy Sergeant?"

"Uh? Oh! Yes sir, all clear."

"Your mic’s still off, Deputy Sergeant."
Alex swallowed an imprecation.

"Right — thank you sir. All clear, sir."

After a brief search, the Al-Fasid escorted Erin through a series of corridors to a large chamber where a squad of operatives in the same midnight-pattern  uniform held position. At the center, a hacker was plugged into one of the ship's terminals while two engineers worked along the perimeter.

The armored suit introduced Erin using the fake identity she had given him. Two commanders awaited: one, an older Haqqislamite woman, likely a seasoned non-commissioned officer; the other, a younger officer she seemed to be advising.

“Well done, Bel Andi” the older woman said “This isn’t just a warcor. Miss O’Nealz is a VIP. A perfect liability, in my opinion.”

The lieutenant gave a small nod. No reaction, no alarm. Everyone remained calm, almost courteous.

Erin felt disoriented. The collapse of her cover had come too fast. She felt reduced, dismissed. Before the gas knocked her out, the last reports she’d heard mentioned O-12 Squad 67004 deployed across several theaters, a containment failure at Hawkings Junction in Neoterra, and an unprecedented number of Kamael snipers showing up in Svalarheima. The machinery of history was turning, and here she was—cut off from it. She needed to get back to LGSRC, and fast.

She snapped.

“So I’m a hostage now? Thanks for pulling me out of the gas, but I know my rights. The Concilium Convention is clear. No terrorist—”

“You’re not a hostage,” the lieutenant interrupted, voice steady and marked by a thick Bourak submondo accent. “And we are not terrorists. You’re our host. We’re professionals. We have a contract. You entered our workspace, and we’re making sure you stay safe.”

The hacker unplugged her gear and gave two thumbs up.

“I’m still press. You can’t detain me like this. I want my comlog back, and I want to leave.”

The lieutenant didn’t respond. Instead, he gave a polite nod, lowered his tactical goggles, chambered a round, and made a hand signal. The team followed suit. Two line troopers moved to hold Erin. A Rui Shi REM, inactive until then, stood up with a low mechanical chirp.

The old woman turned to Erin.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Just follow instructions. Cara and Emrah will handle you. Stay safe during the irruption.”

“Irruption? What irr—”

The D-charges detonated. The floor gave way. Erin and the Dahshat team were thrown down into the Derozer’s command bridge.

The Dashat team swept in, weapons raised. The Rui Shi’s Spitfire opened fire on the ship’s security, neutralizing resistance in seconds.

Captain Cinq stood at the center of the chaos, untouched, her posture calm. As the dust settled, she addressed the intruders.

“We’re on a rescue mission, trying to save lives. What the hell is this?”

Cara raised her rifle toward the captain, but her lieutenant stepped in and gently lowered it with a hand.

“Crew of NN Derozer, we’re fully aware of the situation, but we must assume control of the ship. Team Bravo will escort non-essential personnel to escape pods. Captain, please input these coordinates: 481-516-2342. Full speed. Ignore collision alerts.”

Cinq turned to her navigator. No words were spoken, only a short nod exchanged.

Everyone watched the viewscreen as the ship pivoted, bringing the LGSRC into focus, framed against the deep black canvas of space.

Erin's heart skipped a beat.

The Grimaldi Crater Center was one of the first private facilities built on the Moon after the rediscovery of Dawn. It was constructed using newly developed exotic alloys that had only existed in theory until then. Its design followed an experimental architectural style known as Metaphorical Liberty, which attempted to fuse cutting-edge materials with symbolic form. The style quickly fell out of favor, seen as an early excess from a time when space still felt like a blank canvas. It was soon cataloged and forgotten as humanity turned its attention to the expanding edges of the Human Sphere.

A self-sustaining origami-bubble dome covered the Center, fragmenting Earth's reflection into a field of mirrored orbs. It was meant to represent the new paradigm of space as a world of worlds.

Tara stood under the dome, watching the scattered images of Earth. In front of her was a perfect copy of herself, paused in the moment she entered the bar. Time had been rewound by ten minutes, just after she had accidentally brushed against two undercover Yu Jing agents and mumbled an apology.

She leaned in, examining the folds of her own jacket as though it were hanging on a mannequin. The barman, or whoever that was, finally spoke.

"You look less surprised than I expected."

"I have a twin sister; it's not that different. Still, this is impressive. Is it virtual reality? Something linked to my cube?"

He gave a slight smile.

"We're not online, Tara. This has nothing to do with your cube. And it's not virtual, and it's not a reconstruction. These are real events, happening again inside your mind. Different tech altogether."

She narrowed her eyes, taking in the implications: they were offline, her cube was untouched.

"You don't even know what branch this falls under," she objected "this is Voodootech."

He shrugged.

"Call it whatever you want. We're not here about that. We want the rogue AI you recovered on LGSRC: we want Cleopatra."

"You must have seen me hand it over to the Pneumarch. That case is no longer mine."

His stance did not change, but something in his expression did. A slight tension in the jaw.

"We have evidence that what you delivered to Pneumarch Shignurya was an incomplete copy. They will realize that soon, and when they do, the consequences will come quickly. We know you would never deceive a high-ranking representative of the Combined Army without a reason. That's why we believe you were misled. Something happened in the last forty-two hours. Something you missed. We've searched those hours completely and found nothing. Maybe you will have better luck on a second look."

He paused.

"Fortunately, we have all the time in the world."

"I've heard enough, there's no need to threaten me." Tara said, firmly, "Now let's go back to the Toucan Dandy."

Roby gave a thumbs-up. Alex scratched *put the Prime back online* off his mental checklist.

“Strider Cairo down. We’ve got a situation here!”

New task boxes flooded Alex’s comlog: too many, too fast. Headquarters kept pinging him about another incident at a nearby Moto.Tronica logistics center, where Ariadnan troops were allegedly handing out Uragan rockets like candy. But Alex was stuck on the outskirts of Citade do Sul, where Nomads ships, Haqqislamite agents, Yu Jing operatives, and Combined Army units were all reportedly active. On top of that, Aleph troops were raining fire on his squad.

It had only been three minutes since the shooting started. Aleph wasn’t supposed to be there. No one was. The only person that should have been there was Farid Monte-Sori, a Haqqislamite geologist overseeing Citade do Sul’s reconstruction. The mission brief was simple: grab the guy and leave. Maybe too simple.

His mind drifted back to O-12 training. A rookie had once asked: “Why all the anti-Aleph tactics? Aren’t we allies?”

Alex had smiled, but the instructor hadn’t.

“Good question. It shows you still have faith. We built Aleph, yes. We’re allies, yes. But trust doesn’t mean blind obedience. People forget how fragile that relationship really is, especially since we had confirmation we're not alone in the universe. Aleph needs agency to protect us. Testing the boundaries is part of the deal. Faith is what got us here. Some say society began the day someone treated a broken leg. But never be gullible. Never.”

Alex’s tactical comm system snapped him back to the present.

“Strider Luxor out! Where’s the damn Prime? We’re under heavy fire!”

The reactivated suit vaulted a barricade and opened fire just before the Rudra gunbot came into view. A stream of rounds tore into the REM, engulfing it in flame before it could fully react.

“One down! Hackers inbound—Alexandria moving in!” Alex shouted, sprinting toward the target building.

“They’ve got you in their sights, chief,” came Waverider Suez’s voice. “Shutting them down in three, two, o-”

Static. His signal was cut.

Alex slammed through the entrance. No enemies. No geologist. The comlog pointed upstairs. Outside, the firefight continued like distant thunder. He advanced quickly, pistol ready, checking every corner. Still nothing except for cables, cryo units, and active tech-coffins: definitely not a construction site.

An entire aisle of active coffins stood in dim blue light, frost clinging to each one. He wiped the first clean: inside, was Farid Monte-Sori.

“Well, that’s luck,” Alex muttered. “Maybe too much luck.”

He moved to the next tech-coffin. Then another. And another. He stopped.

All of them contained Farid Monte-Sori.

AROOOOO! AROOOO!

The sirens kept wailing as NN Derozer’s interface lit up with evacuation routes to the last escape pods. Erin entered storage dock number 4, coughing, her vision blurred by tears. She tripped on a crate and fell, just as the pale green mist of the biotechivore seeped through the vents above.

The emergency system's automated voice cut out, replaced by Captain Cinq's calm but commanding tone from the Navigation deck.

Erin inhaled, painstakingly, wondering if it could be her last time doing so.

"Passengers, this is Captain Caroline Cinq. Our distress signal has been received. Nomad Nation’s Light Frigate Payday is on its way to assist with full evacuation. Additional vessels are inbound: Bring Guns To Bear, Hatsune Miku, Crypto Winter, and more. If you can’t reach an escape pod due to biotechivore exposure, go to dock number 7 and wait for instructions. Stay safe. We’ll keep you updated. Cinq out."

Erin felt the gas tightening around her lungs, sapping her strength and will as she started passing out.

Then a large, steady hand cupped the back of her head, fixing a mask to her face. A mix of Liquidbreath and voresolvents rushed into her system. The effect was immediate. She sat down, caught her breath, wiped her eyes, and took the offered hand to stand again.

“Wrong deck, passenger. You shouldn’t be here. Follow me.”

She looked up. The figure towered over her in heavy Bourak-made armor. Boarding mods, scraped-off IDs, and a curved Eastern-style knife at his side. Midnight pattern paintjob. 

Dahshat.

“Thanks for the help,” she said, still coughing. “But I’m no passenger.”

“Good,” the giant replied, slinging a MTX heavy rocket launcher onto his shoulder. “I’m no passenger either.”

Tara drank her espresso immediately, boiling hot, savoring its bitter aftertaste. There was still one hour before her shuttle left for the Circular.

“Anything else, lady?”

The bartender asked, his scalpel-sculpted jawline framing a perfect, quiet smile.

“Another espresso will do,” she replied promptly. “You don’t get real coffee beans on the outer rings that often.”

He turned and lit up the coffee machine again.

“The moon’s always the moon, right? By the way, please double-check your flight. They say O-12 is issuing a blockade somewhere on Human Edge.”

Tara looked at the chatty bartender, trying to recall if she had ever met him before.

“Oh, I didn’t know. Has something happened? I guess any blockade would need approval from our Combined guests. Have they released a statement?”

A half-smile and a fresh espresso were promptly served.

“Good point, miss. I believe not. They say there’s been a robbery at a research station in the asteroid belt.”

“It’s always chicken theft anyway. There are always bigger things going on.”

She dismissed the topic, casually spinning her middle finger ring as she stirred her coffee.

“Well, miss, I guess not. Those two gentlemen who came in before you said it was serious business.”

She nodded, now fully aware of who she was talking to.

“Everything’s always super serious to the Emperor’s officers. It’s their way of making a career.”

He leaned back against the aquarium glass as two giant Varunan jellyfish drifted past.

“Oh, so you did notice them...”

“Let’s cut to the chase, big boy. I’ve been in the business long enough to know when I’m getting a good coffee or a good job. I was hoping for a good coffee but, to be honest, yours kinda reminds me why I usually never drink it. No offense.”

The jellyfish swirled away among twirling glittery algae.

“None taken. The job we’re offering is way better than any coffee I’d ever make.”

“Industrial espionage? Cube retrieval? I just got out of a messy business, and I can’t wait to jump into something else.”

“Well, this is definitely something else...depending on how you look at it. We need you to find a memory.”

“Weird. But it still sounds like an interesting job. When do I start?”

“It already started, Tara. We are forty-two hours and three minutes back in time, inside your memories.”

The bartender smiled, or maybe he grinned.